Wolfgang Schwarz

Belief, Desire, and Rational Choice (Spring 2020)

This course is an introduction to formal models of belief, desire, and
rational choice. It has roughly three parts. The first introduces the core ideas
of Bayesian epistemology, where belief is treated as an attitude that comes in
degrees. In the second part, we turn to formal models of desire, drawing on
utility theory in economics and value theory in philosophy. We will also look at
some connections between rational belief and desire. The third part takes a
closer look at decision theory, which formalises the intuition that rational
agents do what they believe will bring them closer to satisfying their
desires.

No prior knowledge of the material is expected. Familiarity with basic
propositional logic will be helpful.

Classes

Lecture: TBD

Tutorial Group 1: TBD

Tutorial Group 2: TBD

Assessment

The lecture notes for each week will contain exercises. You should try
to answer all of them and hand in your solutions (on paper, with your student
number at the top) at the start of the next lecture. I will mark your
submissions for each week on a scale from roughly 30 to 90; the average of
your scores will be converted into 50% of your final grade.

The question mark rule: If you write a question mark next to
an answer on an exercise sheet (even if the answer is empty), I will
give you a 20% higher mark if you're wrong and a 20% lower mark if
you're right.

The lecture notes also contain essay questions. At the end
of the term, you should choose one of these to write a short essay of
1500 words. Your mark for the essay determines the other 50% of your
grade. The essay must be submitted on LEARN by Thursday 25th April
2019, 12pm.

Check you marks by entering your student number here (including the 's'):

Literature access

You can find all the readings that aren't links in a secret folder.
If you've forgotten the address of that folder, send me an email.

Syllabus

Week 1: Overview

How beliefs and desires are related to choice; why beliefs and desires
are graded; the difference between conceptual analysis and
model-building.